CONVERT & RESTORE OLD PHOTOS
What you’ll need
In years gone by, the best way to get old photos on your PC was to scan them one at a time using a flatbed scanner. Thankfully, you can now simply take photos of your photos using your phone or digital camera. The results are better than those scans of yesteryear.
You are limited only by the specifications of your camera or phone. The newer, more high-spec your phone is the better your results will be. We’re using a Nexus 6P phone for this feature, which was advanced when launched two years ago, but has been overtaken by other phones since. Nevertheless, we were able to get excellent results using Google’s Photoscan app (see Workshop, page 55).
Prepare your environment
Preparation is everything when it comes to getting the best possible digital image of your photos. Ensure you’re in a well-lit room (preferably sunlit), then place your photo in a position where its glossy surface isn’t in direct light or reflecting anything. Sticking our photo to a wall so it was just out of direct light worked well for us. The two images below show the difference in quality between a photo that was placed and lit correctly and one that wasn’t.
Using a digital camera
If you’re digitising prints using a digital camera, you should consider buying a tripod to ensure your results are not compromised by camera shake. Ideally, you should place your photographs against a plain, unpatterned colour (preferably white). This will make it easier to use a photo editor, such as Paint. net ( www.getpaint.net), to crop unwanted background from your digital image. To completely remove the chance of hand movements blurring your photo, you should also use a remote control if your camera has one.
If you have hundreds of photos to convert you might want to create a photo stage – a permanent space set up so you can quickly insert each photo without having to adjust your camera each time.
Improve brightness, contrast and colours
Google Photos lets you adjust the brightness, contrast and colour of your photos (see Step 3 of our Workshop on page 55), but for more control over these effects you should edit your photos in Paint.net ( www.getpaint.net).
Once you’ve installed it, open your photo in the program, then click Adjustments to see a list of tools. The most useful tools for restoring photos are Auto-level, ‘Brightness/contrast’ (see screenshot above) and ‘Hue/saturation’. The ‘Black and White’ and Sepia options also come in handy if you want to add more arty effects to your photograph.
We tend to use Auto-level as an initial fix. Click it and Paint.net will
automatically adjust the colours and brightness levels of your photo. If you’re not happy with the results, press Ctrl+z to undo the changes.
Click Brightness/contrast to change these settings using sliders (see screenshot page 53), or click ‘Hue/ Saturation’, then move the Saturation slider to reduce or increase the intensity of the colours.
If you only want your changes to effect a certain part of your photo (such as something in the background), click the Rectangle Select tool, then drag your cursor around the portion of the image you want to change. Now only the section of the photo within the rectangular frame you’ve drawn will be affected by any subsequent changes you make. Press the Escape key to remove the frame.
Repair damaged photos
Over time photos that you thought were safely protected in an album can begin to suffer from dog-eared corners, tears and scratches, like the left-hand image in our example photo above right.
To fix this, open your damaged image in Paint.net, then click the Clone Stamp tool. This lets you ‘paint’ over any damaged areas using similar tones from undamaged areas of your photo. Next, hold down Ctrl, then click an area of your photo with similar tones and texture to the damaged section. Select a Brush width of around 50, then a hardness level of around 80. Now click the damaged area of your photo and the flaw should be repaired.
If the damage to your photo is quite extensive, it will be difficult to hide the fact that you’ve cloned one part of your photo and copied it to another. If this is the case, undo any initial change you made (press Ctrl+z), then click More in the Colors window (tap F8 to open it if it’s closed). Change the ‘Opacity – Alpha’ setting to 60 to ensure more subtle cloning edits.
Now follow the Clone Stamp instructions above to repair your damage. This time you might not notice any change at all in your photo. Keep clicking in the same spot, however, to slowly increase the effect of the cloning. Move your cursor slightly from side to side to keep the edges of the area you’re working on fully blended with the areas around it.
One thing you should avoid is duplicating detail that looks out of place in the repaired area, especially areas with greater detail (such as faces and clothing material). To make things easier, reduce the size of the brush width. If you examine our After shot, you’ll see we were even able to repair a number of surface scratches (on the girl’s shoulder and hand).
Colourise black & white photos
We’ve already explained how you can make a colour photograph black and white, but wouldn’t it be all the more impressive if you could do the reverse? Algorithmia’s Colorize Photos tool lets you do exactly that. It uses information from thousands of images to recognize that grass should be green, sky should be blue, and so on. The results aren’t perfect, but are impressive nonetheless.
To get started, go to www.snipca. com/25662, then click the blue Upload
button, just above the ‘image URL’ search bar. Select the photo you want to add colour to, then click Open. After a few seconds a half-colour, half-monochrome’ image will display on your screen. Move the blue dividing line to compare the new colourised version with the black-andwhite original (see screenshot above). Click Download Colorized Image to download the image to your PC. You will almost certainly be able to spot areas of the photo that could be improved. See our mini workshop below to find out how.
Convert negatives and slides
The equipment you need to digitise negatives and slides depends on the type you have.
If you have 35mm negatives and slides then ION’S Audio Slides Forever Scanner (£49.99 from Amazon: www.snipca.com/25710) could be all you need. It connects to your PC via a USB cable and scans your negatives, taking a couple of seconds to do each one. It produces 5-megapixel images of your negatives that should be high quality enough for most people. For a higher pixel count, buy the Ultra-high-res version for £99.99 (also from Amazon: www.snipca.com/25711).
If your negatives are in another format – such as 110 Film, 126KPK or Super 8 slides – buy QPIX’S scanner (£89.99 from Amazon: www.snipca.com/25712). It works independently, meaning you don’t need to connect it to your PC. Instead, it comes with a 16GB SD card that you save your photos to in the ususla way. You then need to insert the SD card into your PC to transfer them.
Change the name and date of multiple photos
If you’ve added a photo album to your PC – snaps from a 1998 Florida trip, for example – you can change their name and date in one go with free program Xnview ( www.xnview.com). Note, if they are in Google Photos, download them to your PC first by selecting them, clicking the three vertical dots at the top right, then clicking Download.
To download Xnview, click the blue Download button, then scroll to the Standard section and click ‘Xnview Std. Setup’. Open the program, select all the photos you want to rename, then press F2. In our example, type 1998-Florida####, then click OK. This will rename all the files ‘1998-Florida’, and give them each a number (from 0001 upwards). To change their dates to when they were taken (rather than converted), select the photos, click Tools, ‘Change timestamp’, select ‘Specific date and time’, then change the date using the dropdown menus (see screenshot above). Make sure ‘File date created’ is ticked, then click Apply.
Remove pops and clicks
Any scratches on your records will be reproduced in your recording. To reduce their impact using Audacity, click Effect, then Click Removal. When the Click Removal tool opens, click Preview to listen to a sample of your recording with the current Threshold and Max Spike Width settings applied. If you’re happy with the quality of your recording, click OK to apply these settings to the whole track.
If you can still hear pops and clicks, decrease the Threshold setting by 20 (the default is 200) and increase the Max Spike Width by 5 (the default is 20 – see screenshot right). Click Preview again and repeat the process if necessary. Just be aware that moving the Threshold close to 0 will eventually distort your audio. If this happens increase the Threshold level until your audio returns to normal.
Remove constant hissing
If you try digitising an old vinyl record the music might be obscured by constant crackling. To reduce this, open the digital recording in Audacity, press F1 to launch the Selection Tool, then highlight a (silent) section of your recording that only has the background crackling – the first few seconds before the music kicks in, for example. Next, click Effect, Noise Reduction, then Get Noise Profile (see screenshot below). Press Ctrl+a to highlight the entire recording, then click Effect, followed by Noise Reduction. Click Preview and a sample of music will be played with the new effect applied. If you’re happy with it, click OK to apply the same effect across the whole recording.
Break a recording into individual tracks
Audacity will record sides of records and cassettes in one chunk, rather than as individual tracks. To break up the recording, click Analyze, then Sound Finder. Change the ‘Add a label at the end of the track’ setting to 1, then click OK. After a few moments you’ll see that a new track called ‘Label Track’ has been added under your recording and a number (1,2, 3, and so on) has been added to sections of your recording (each of these represents a single track). To export your recording as individual tracks click File, then Export Multiple.
Create MP3 and FLAC files
When it’s first installed Audacity isn’t able to create MP3 files. To change that, go to www.snipca.com/25667, then click the ‘Lame v3.99.3 for Windows.exe’ link. Double-click the file and install LAME using the setup wizard.
Next, close and reopen Audacity. To export your converted music as an MP3, click File, Export Audio, type a file name, then choose MP3 Files in the ‘Save as type’ dropdown menu. Click Save and your MP3 will be created. To create FLAC, simply select FLAC Files in the dropdown menu.